Sunday, December 7, 2008

Bad Flu, Jesus's Fault

It's like jesus hates my band. Not to say we haven't taken some cheap shots at him. We did claim to be better than him in a song or two. But imagine this. Life and time is a big cog wheel. Every time it turns to an opening, though, it's closed up with someone getting sick (Brittney, in this case) or with other plans getting caught up in the hole, therefore, recording time (being represented by the holes in the cog) is always passed. Now if no one in the band had a job, there wouldn't be this cog-like problem. It'd be like a tire that wore out its treads. We'd be able to go in and record at will. But jesus, remember, is having a battle with us and he's got his dad to call the shots in life. This is a fucking dictatorship for all of us.

Here's another problem in my life: I don't know what I think about bands like Fall Out Boy and Simple Plan that are like...kind of really lame "punk" and that kind of give punk a bad face, yet they kind of keep, in a very poor way, the media from being completely eaten by bands like Hinder and Nickelback. They also know what punk is, I'm pretty sure. Simple Plan loves Bad Religion and used to tour with the likes of Pennywise and Ten Foot Pole in a band before Simple Plan. Fall Out Boy are huge Jawbreaker fans. So it's like...it's relativity, okay? Yes, when offered a Toys That Kill album and a Fall Out Boy album, I'd take Toys That Kill. But if it's Fall Out Boy or Nickelback, I'd kill the person offering me albums for assuming for a minute that I'd want anything to do with a Nickelback album. Same goes for the earth moves at 9,000 miles a...minute I want to say? around the sun but I walk do the street at 4 miles an hour and the car goes past me in the opposite direction at 55 miles per hour plus the 4 I'm approaching it at, making it 59 miles per hour. Relativity, you know.

On that topic, Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day REALLY knows where punk can be found. In a recent interview I watched (I was in a Green Day interviews on Youtube buzz), Billie Joe was saying how hip hop is kicking rock's ass. He said it's all going to shit unless you go underground, where he cited Dillinger Four being a kickass band. You can't say that Dillinger Four is a great punk band if you know nothing about punk, the way I see it. He also mentioned bands like No Means No and how Hefe is an amazing guitarist and musician. I think Green Day is punk, they just do it in a different way. I don't agree with the whole playing on TRL thing (which had its last show today [insert celestial chorus here]) and I thought the eyeliner was a little too far, but I do believe that American Idiot was a geniunely good album and has more punk in it than 99% of everything else mainstream. Green Day was my gateway drug to punk with The Offspring, so I'm going to forever back them up the best I can. Go ahead and say that you're more punk than me for it, see what I care.

Okay, here's something you can suck my dick to: I've been into punk since 5th grade. Now I didn't plan for this to be a blog about punk stuff, but this is where it's going, I suppose. Sure, I was never around to hear F.Y.P while they actually played as F.Y.P and John Samson hadn't been with Propagandhi for like 10 years, but do you really expect me, living in a redneck area and having a redneck family, to start listening to punk music when I'm still sucking my mom's tit? That's what Phil Colins and Genesis was for.

Truth was, I hated AFI the first time I heard them...and the second time, and the thousandth time. Why? My sister was obsessed. She sang "Cereal Wars" in the most annoying tone at the dinner table all of the time. I don't remember how she got into AFI, but it was probably because of David Irwin, who listened to punk at the time (he's now a scene bitch, sad but true). I got into NOFX because he'd made her a mix CD and Perfect Government was on it. I found Punk in Drublic in the used CDs section at the local FYE and I bought it because I'd heard that song and liked it, but I didn't see it's name on the back, I just thought "Hey, if I liked that song, I should like their other songs," which SHOULD be the case for every band, but it doesn't usually work that way, apparently. You see, that's why punk is the best (for me). They make records with more than one good song. Yes, Dinosaurs WILL Die. Anyway, I got Punk In Drublic after that. My sister had gotten Dookie at a yardsale and I'd bought Americana at Walmart one day because I'd been told that Pretty Fly was a good song. One thing leads to another, I read the acknowledgments at the end of the record sleeves and find out what other bands I should listen to. And then the day comes around that I'm listening to Toys That Kill. If you could draw a diagram of how every punk band is related, it definitely would not be just a straight line with some outlying dots. I can't even come up with a witty model it'd look like with words. But now that I know the routes and all, I can tell you, "Well it's as simple as this. You could go from Green Day to Pinhead Gunpowder to Dillinger Four because they did a split together and then to Toys That Kill because D4 and TTK are good friends and had a DVD or some shit like that." It's an art, I'm pretty sure.

Anyway, there's more to being punk than liking punk bands. I guess when it comes down to it, I'm not really that punk. I abide by the law all of the time, I do wonderfully in school, I've never destroyed a scupture or monument. I'm very pro-gay and anti-religion and all of those things, but you can't do a whole lot about that around here. If I told anyone that I support gays and that I live with my dad and his boyfriend, they'd shoot another hole in my bathroom window and burn down my house. If I speak against religion, which I still do, I get a bunch of close-minded assholes and no positive reactions. However, something beautiful happened around this time last year. Perhaps it was because I and my girlfriend at the time openly opposed Christianity, but anyway, another girl in our Driver's Ed class asked us something relating to religion and about how she was considering how Christianity has some definite flaws. Everyone else in the class immediately started telling us to read a bible, but she seemed to be very sure that what she was questioning was in her full right to question. So maybe I can't always start big pro-gay or anti-religion movements, but I'm always here to support those that are with me on it. I don't know what all punk is or what you have to do to be punk, but I try my best and agree with most every punk belief and view. It's a scene I can believe in and it's a very fun scene without a tolerance for drama. I'm too politically correct to be punk, too. Look at how I try to leave plenty of room for other people's opinions as I type this. Oh well, sue me.